'Game of Thrones' finale: The [REDACTED] is dead, boys / and it's so lonely on a limb

Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman

Monday

May 20, 2019 at 8:43 AM

"What I did... is it right?”

“What we did.”

“Was it right? It doesn’t feel right.”

“Ask me again in 10 years.”

RELATED: The best memes in reaction to the 'Game of Thrones' finale

The series finale of “Game of Thrones” aired May 19, 2019, drawing to a close one of our weird decade’s most improbably popular shows. It went from an expensive-looking adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s popular series of epic fantasy novels to worldwide phenomenon. It wasn’t the first such program, it won’t be the last, but for the past eight years, folks really, really liked yakking about it.

Viewers spotted two plastic water bottles in the ‘Game of Thrones’ finale

And the above, well, that has to be an in-joke about “GoT” showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff who, over the course of the years that outlasted the books, have become some of the most complained-about people on the internet who aren’t politicians.

Let’s skip the “and now our watch has ended” jokes and get directly to it, as it was ... certainly an episode of television:

We open on a soot-covered Tyrion wandering through the rubble of King’s Landing. He looks haunted and ashamed and humiliated all at once. He sees still-burning children covered in ash. A half naked ash-covered civilian walks by. An enormous burn covers his back.

Jon Snow and Davos approach. Tyrion waves off any help — he will wander the Red Keep alone.

He passes a cracked bell.

Tyrion: That’s a rather direct allegory, huh.

Bell: IKR.

Grey Worm hovers over surrendered soldiers.

Jon: It’s over. These men are prisoners.

Grey Worm: I was told to *checks notes* “Kill all who follow Cersei Lannister.”

Davos: Let’s speak to the manager.

Grey Worm: You do that, I’m gonna go back to executing these fellows.

Tyrion wanders through the Red Keep. All the rooms we have seen before are now destroyed, covered in snow and ash. What was once seen as impregnable is now very much not.

Tyrion: Am I nuts or does it seem like we are filling for time?

Audience: You are not nuts.

He finds the chamber where his brother and sister died. He sees Jaime’s gold hand.

Tyrion: Well, that’s hard to miss.

He’s removing rocks and sobbing.

He finds his siblings, side by side. The full weight of how badly he’s screwed this all the way up seems to crash on him.

Outside, Arya is wandering around. The pacing of this season has been completely bonkers.

Arya: Now I am killing time. I killed everything else, now I will kill time.

Dany: With a dragon behind me I look very much like the devil. That is the level this show is working on now. It is likely that is the level this show was always working on and several million people just chose to forget it.

She speaks to her army in their tongue.

Dany: (tl;dr) We won, Grey Worm has a new name, he is my Master of War, we are gonna liberate the living hell out of the Seven Kingdoms. Think Cambodia in ’75 with less Maoism and more dragons.

Dany: Also, Tyrion, I gotta kill you for freeing Jaime.

Tyrion: Lemme toss this Hand pin for maximum HARUMPH.

Darth Dany: Take him away.

Jon: Hey, Arya ...

Arya: About your genocidal queen ...

Jon: OUR queen ...

Arya: .... have you even MET Sansa?

Arya: Yo, Dany is gonna get RID of you, Jon.

Jon visits Tyrion.

Tyrion: Wine?

Jon: Do you mean whine? Got that for days, bro.

Tyrion: I brought this on myself.

Jon: I can’t justify what happened. I won’t try. The war is over now.

Tyrion: ... have you ever met a genocidal revolutionary? She ain’t done.

Tyrion: Look, I get it. She bodied a lot of people who deserved what they got. But whenever someone with access to a super weapon starts talking about building a better world, look for the exit.

Jon: I loved her. She just saw Missandei killed.

Audience: You LITERALLY JUST SAID you weren’t going to try to justify this.

GoT writers: 404 FILE NOT FOUND.

Jon: I’m sorry it came to this.

Audience: Even by your bone-headed standards that is a seriously “you know nothing” thing to say.

Tyrion: Sansa and Arya are next, you jackass.

Jon: ...

There’s Dany, looking at the Iron Throne. She walks toward it ... very ... slowly.

Dany: Thinking about this moment all my life, so it is my turn to kill not women and children ... but time.

Jon shows up.

Dany: Did what I had to do.

Jon: You killed children, sweetie.

Dany: Cersei used their innocence against me.

Jon: THAT IS HOW CHILDREN ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK.

Jon: The quality of mercy is not strained.

Dany: Try me.

Dany: You were a bastard and I couldn’t do math for some reason. Let’s break the wheel (of history).

They kiss. He stabs her in the heart.

Drogon: WHAT THE —

Drogon shoots fire of grief of rage.

The fire melts the Iron Throne.

Iron Throne: It’s been a good run. This is a VERY ALLEGORICALLY DIRECT WAY TO GO.

Edmund Tully: As an old white man, I am going to kill a few minutes here.

Sansa: Sit your ass down.

Samwell: Have we considered representative democracy?

Everyone else: LOLOLOLOL.

Tyrion: What unites people? A good story.

Everyone who has ever read something by Neil Gaiman: Oh for the love of God, not this again.

Gaiman: I swear to the old gods and new I had NOTHING to do with this.

Tyrion: Nobody here has a better story than Bran the Broken.

Audience: ....

Audience: That’s certainly an ... odd title for a guy you want to make a king ... or something?

Sansa: My story, while problematic, was kinda incredible.

Arya: I am a literal shape-changing superhero who saved the world.

Brienne: I am probably this world’s first female knight.

Audience: This is the most mediocre white dude-ish ever.

GoT writing staff: GONE FISHIN’

Tyrion: Here is the thing: He doesn’t want the job. We have to draft him. And he’ll never have kids. When he dies, we come back here and do this again. What do you say, Bran?

Bran: Why do you think I came all this way?

Audience: You know, your everything happens for a reason shtick is both grating, not correct and coming from a very privileged — you know what? Never mind. This is almost over.

Everyone there: OK fine. Bran it is.

Sansa: Wow I look sad.

Sansa: The North is semi-detached.

Bran: Fine.

Audience: You mean to tell me Bran is cool with independent kingdoms and Yara isn’t like “Srsly? The Iron Islands are OUT!”

Tyrion: All hail Bran the Broken!

Bran: ... still going with that huh? Guess who I am drafting to be my Hand.

Tyrion: .... walked RIGHT into that one.

Tyrion visits a very shabby looking Jon Snow.

Tyrion: Also you need to join the Nights Watch to avoid a death sentence.

Audience: ... there’s still a Night’s Watch?

Tyrion: No one is happy, which makes it a good compromise, I suppose.

Audience: No suppose about it. That is the literal, traditional definition of a good compromise.

GoT writers: THIS MAILBOX IS FULL.

Jon: What I did ... is it right?

Tyrion: What WE did.

Jon: Was it right? It doesn’t feel right.

Tyrion: Ask me again in 10 years.

Tyrion walks through King’s Landing. It is being rebuilt. It feels oddly optimistic.

Grey Worm is on a boat with Unsullied and possibly Dothraki.

Grey Worm: I’ve really had it with these grafted devils. Off to Naath!

Jon meets his family.

Jon: You are the best leader the north could ask for.

Sansa: Yes I know.

Arya: I am going west of Westeros and going to discover planets are round.

Audience: If you don’t think swashbuckling Arya discovering Westeros’ wild west is the ABSOLUTE BEST “Thrones” spin-off possible, this conversation is over.

Brienne is looking through the books of the knights. She finds Jaime’s page, writes that he died protecting his queen.

Audience: History really is written by the winners, huh?

Audience: We’d kill to see Brienne starting her own page — sorry, we said we would stop.

Tyrion is literally arranging chairs in the new small council. This is now a show about interior decoration.

Audience: ... about the pacing this season ...

GoT Writers: SORRY NO BARS OUT HERE.

Davos, Bronn, Brienne and Sam the Maester all show up.

Sam presents Tyrion with a giant book called “A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE.”

Medieval nerds everywhere: That is the worst idea of what illuminated script is supposed to look like that has ever been on screen.

Tyrion: Am I treated well in this volume?

Sam: You’re not in it.

Audience: Literally no idea what we were supposed to take from that.

Tyrion: How about that Drogon fellow?

Audience: You mean the mildly sentient nuke that’s just ... out there? Yeah, how about that guy?

Bran: Let me worry about that.

Bronn, the new Master of Coin and Lord of Highgarden and a VERY rich man, wants new brothels. Tyrion wants infrastructure and food.

Tyrion: I once brought a jackass and a honeycomb into a brothel ...

Audience: Guess we’re never going to hear the punchline of that joke.

GoT writers: “very drunk and far from the internet.”

Cut to Jon Snow, who enters the night’s watch only to see ... Tormund. The Wildlings seem to be ... living there, I guess?

Jon greets Ghost! Yay Ghost!

Audience: WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS EAR!?!?!?!

The show, this massive, complicated, violent, smart, idiotic, captivating, infuriating program that a whole lot of people saw themselves in, closes with a genuinely gorgeous montage of the three siblings who are not Bran, cutting between Queen Sansa, Jon a Wildling leader (for some reason) and Arya about to go exploring. It’s a sequence that cuts to the heart of epic fantasy: The adventure always continues.

Audience: ... so that’s it, huh? Eight years of investment and enjoyment and way too much entitlement from certain sectors and watching these young actors grow up and remember when Sean Bean was on this show and thinking very hard about where that’s ... it.

Internet: You best believe the series creators should stay far, far away.

More on the What It All Means coming up.

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